Grills are a kind of electric cooking device. Recently, portable indoor grills that can be positioned on counter tops in the kitchen have become prevalent. Whereas grills were previously associated with a lot of smoke, indoor counter top grills drain enough fat to avoid burning oil and grease and smoking up the kitchen. Since grilling is a healthier way to cook meats and other foods, these indoor counter top grills have become very popular over the last seven or so years. Indoor grills have been made more convenient than the clumsy outdoor grill of decades ago. Sleek stand alone indoor counter grills, such as the George Foreman® grill sold by Salton, Inc. of Lake Forest, Ill. or the Hamilton Beach® line of grills sold by Hamilton Beach/Proctor-Silex, Inc. of Southern Pines, N.C., have become popular ways of grilling meat, poultry, seafood, vegetables, fruit and breads. These grills are popular because they are convenient and reasonably priced ways of grilling the above kinds of foods indoors—they are compact, they do not create large amount of smoke, they are fairly simple to use, are reasonably priced, etc.
Even though these grills are generally convenient to use, and even though these grills are designed to drain off much of the food residues that accumulate, they still suffer from the drawback of requiring repeated and tedious cleaning. In particular, although these counter top grills have non-stick cooking surfaces and are shaped to provide drainage of unwanted fats, greases and other food refuse out of the grill because the cooking surface is inclined and channeled, use of the grills still leaves significant food residues. The George Foreman® grill actually comes with its own scraper for cleaning off food residues from its two cooking surfaces. As a result, thoroughly cleaning off food residue from the surfaces of the cooking plates of these grills is still necessary before further use.
Presently, the grill's care booklet's cleaning instructions instruct a consumer to perform the following tedious steps of cleaning before each use of these grills: (1) scrape the cooking surface of the upper cooking plate, (2) scrape the cooking surface of the lower cooking plate, (3) wipe each of these two cooking surfaces thoroughly with a cloth towel or the like, (4) clean the scraping tool used to perform steps (1) and (2) and (5) clean and/or scrape the drip tray, in the case of those models, such as the George Foreman® grill, that have drip trays. The George Foreman® grill actually comes with a scraper.
Cleaning the drip tray and scraper are very difficult once the fat and grease has dried. It is also difficult to put such items in the dishwasher because of their shape.
These cleaning steps have to be performed each time the grill has to be used since the grilling process by its nature leaves food residues every time. It is difficult to clean every ridge and groove of the grill. certain items such as fish have a strong odor and requires particularly meticulous cleaning. Performance of these cleaning steps is time-consuming, tedious and tiresome and directly weighs against popular use of the grill. Moreover, the fact that these grills are by their nature popular due precisely to their convenience and simplicity, means that the inconvenience and difficulty of having to clean food residue from their cooking surfaces directly undercuts the value and the very purpose of these grills.
The present situation where the grills requires tedious cleaning suffers from the additional problem that it has led users of the grill to use alternative cleaning methods that are dangerous. For example, although it is not mentioned in the care and use instructions booklet that accompanies the George Foreman® grill, it is commonly known by owners of this grill that the most effective way of cleaning the George Foreman® grill and other counter top grills is to wipe down the cooking surfaces with a wet paper towel while the grill is still hot and the fatty grease has not yet dried onto the cooking surfaces. This has to be done right after the food is removed from the grill, which means that the food is getting cold and diminishing the “hot off the grill” appeal. It is well known to do this and consumers do this. The problem is they also get burned doing it. These grills contain no warning device indicating when they have cooled down beyond the point when they are turned off. In addition, the lid of the grill often closes accidentally while trying to clean with the wet towel. Therefore, consumers often burn their arms and hands when attempting to wipe the hot cooking surfaces of the grill to save work. In sum, the official cleaning system for these grills is tedious and is often avoided and the cleaning method most likely to be used is not safe.
It is noted that the new user maintenance instructions for the George Foreman® grill states that for stubborn build-up one should “use a wet sponge while the [grill] is still somewhat warm”. This presents two problems. First, consumers often miscalculate how “warm” the grill is and get burned. Second, one would ruin one's sponge in using it to clean fish grease and other fatty grease and grime from the grill since cleaning off the sponge after using the sponge to clean the grill would be difficult. That may be why consumers use a wet paper towel but that is dangerous, as explained above.
Besides cleaning these counter top grills, it is also necessary to remove any lingering smell that would interfere with a further use of the grill. In particular, fish emit strong odors which remain on the grill after use. This odor problem is a strong impetus for consumers to wipe the cooking surfaces down with a wet paper towel while the grill is still very warm rather than scraping away the dried grease later. In an illustrative example, one woman stopped using her George Foreman® grill for fish because she claimed that the only effective way to remove the fish odor was by wiping it down wet while hot and she got burned while doing this. So she simply does not cook fish in it anymore. Many people do not use these grills at all due to the cleaning problem.
Accordingly, there is a compelling need to provide an apparatus or way that allows using these counter grills without having to constantly clean the cooking surfaces of these grills after each use. There is a compelling to have such an apparatus whose use in conjunction of the grill would not in any way detract from the present advantages of use of the grill, for example, maintaining the non-stick surfaces that are in contact with the food, being able to drain off the fats using the inclined lower cooking surface of the grill, etc. Such an apparatus should also address the cleaning problems on every cooking surface of the grill, i.e. the lid also and not just the lower cooking surface. Further, there is a compelling need to have a way to use these counter top grills without any unsafe cleaning or deodorizing steps likely to be taken prior to each re-use.
Although barbecue grill covers have been the subject of numerous patents, for example U.S. Pat. No. 4,969,449 to Levin, U.S. Pat. No. 5,009,151 to Hungerford, U.S. Pat. No. 3,555,994 to Nemetz and U.S. Pat. No. 3,082,757 to Hohe, the prior art is not known to have provided an apparatus or method that effectively addresses the above concerns and presently such grills are used in a manner that still officially requires tedious, time-consuming scraping and cleaning and unofficially invites unsafe cleaning methods. The present invention does address the above compelling needs, successfully provides an answer to them and provides many other important advantages.
In addition to cleanliness, there is a different problem of food separation. Sometimes a grill or other cooking utensil is shared by individuals who observe different rules concerning the food involved. For example, a person observing kosher dietary laws may share an apartment including its cooking facilities with someone who either does not observe such laws or who does not observe them as strictly. Similarly, a very strict vegetarian might share cooking facilities with a carnivorous individual and may not want their food cooked on a cooking surface that has any meat residue on it. In such situations, completely separating the food being grilled from the cooking surfaces of the grill upon which the food is placed can be important to the one who desires to avoid mixing or contacting certain kinds of foods. Even aside from sharing, a single individual may desire to have a method of separating a cooking surface used for meat from dairy products and vice versa in furtherance of kosher dietary laws. An apparatus that provides the food separation advantages sought while also solving the cleaning problems discussed above would be particularly valuable.